Any suggestions for dealing with aggresive behaviour and anger issues due to being bullied @ school?

Karen - posted on 03/02/2010
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Our 7 year old daughter's behaviour has taken a drastic change. She comes home from school angry and is very aggresive towards the whole family. I believe this is the result of the ongoing bullying from school but am definitely running out of patience. I am having a hard time getting her to open up about the incidents at school and seeing as how she is just starting to talk about them, I fear that punishing her will only cause her to stop talking all together making it difficult to resolve the bullying.

Currently, I remove her from the situation and leave her somewhere to "cool off".

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View replies by

Ateh - posted on 03/03/2010

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Please don't punish her. You'll make things worse... I had this experience with my eldest son when he was seven. The good thing was he told us about the bullying. My husband told him to fight back (that was a bad advise :D) but he didn't dare to do that. What I did was I went to his school and "warned" the boy (identified by my son) not to bully my son anymore or I'll talk to his parents. After that he never get bullied anymore. Bullies will not dare with others whom are more "powerful" . So show your "power". You must go to school to check on it. Talk to the teacher or her friends. Never wait because she'll suffer more... Good luck

while you sort out what is going on, why don't you get her to draw a picture of the bullies, fasten it to a pillow and imagine beating them up, while punching the pillow.

but you must urgently deal with the situation with the bullies at school, as above is only a short term solution, and to deal with anger; it will not help with self-esteem that's getting damaged in the process of being bullied.

I too went through this problem. My son was constantly being tormented at school, and would take everything personally. He's extremely sensitive and bottled everything up and would just burst out in tears if I got onto him for anything. I sat down and had talks with him and sincerely asked him if he had been getting picked on at school and he opened up. Sometimes all it takes is just asking everyday how their day went and if anyone had hassled him that day. I tell him to always treat people how they would like to be treated. As for what to do about the other kids when they are bullying, I tell him to tell, tell, tell. We try to make sure that he understands whatever it is he's going through right now can be fixed and if he lets me or the teacher/principal know it can be resolved. Before he used to just knock the snot out of the kids that teased him and so we always got calls home about his behavior. They portrayed him as the aggressive one when he had been getting teased and tormented but he wouldn't tell the teachers why he had done it. They just thought he was mean spirited. He's very empathetic now and talks to me frequently about his troubles. I guess the bullies parents just don't care enough about them to talk to them and tell them you can't do that and it's not acceptable. Life's too short and these poor kids take the brunt of everything.

Had the same problem with my son he would bottle everything up and come home and hit ten lumps out of his older brother and give us a load of lip. I only found out about the bullying because his older brother told me but i knew something was wrong. Four years my son had to put up with this lunatic bully in school while i struggled to get the school to sort the problem out. In the end i moved my son from his school because he was turning so violent because of the pent up rage. Hes been in a new school for six months and hes a different boy, back to a smiling happy nine year old that loves school again. I would try and get whats going on out of your daughter and then get the school to sort it out but dont make the mistake i made, dont leave her there if the school dont sort it out. I was adamant my son wouldnt move schools because he was the victim but in the end i just made him suffer more.